


The Naming Night

by RedRoseWhite



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Animal Death, Blood, Blood Magic, Gen, Self-Harm, Sith Rituals, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25584121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRoseWhite/pseuds/RedRoseWhite
Summary: Ben Solo arrives on Moraband; Kylo Ren leaves.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	The Naming Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nixcomix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nixcomix/gifts).



> This was written for a fic challenge to write a one-shot based on a piece of fanart in 500 words or more. Mine is based on this work by [loobeeinthesky](https://littleststarfighter.tumblr.com/post/155447285197/when-the-shadows-remain-in-the-light-of-day-on-the)

He’d chosen the name Kylo, but it wasn’t his yet. First, he would need to complete the ritual. Most people knew about the temple that lay under his grandfather’s fortress already; but the one Snoke brought him to was one where even fewer would venture, on Moraband. The ground was red and the sky was black. Peaks jutted at the sky as if they wanted to stab it through the heart. Ben would have been afraid, but Kylo wasn’t. He was roiling and excited to be unleashed. 

The knights stood in a semicircle around the sepulchre of the great Darth Bane. A hot breeze swirled tomb-dust in scrolls around their boots and Snoke laid out the tools. After stripping as he had been instructed, the air was warm enough that Ben was just as comfortable naked as he had been clothed. Trudgen handed him a black cloak with a hood, and once it was draped around Ben’s form, Snoke bent over to wind the ceremonial bindings in onyx beads around his hands, up his arms, loosely on his neck. Long enough to allow him some movement of his arms, but holding them in front of his body. They held a beady glitter in the low light around them, and Ben stared at the pattern they made against the pallor of his skin, lost in the contrast.

“Now, initiate,” Snoke rasped. “We begin, and give you your name.”

The other knights crowded closer. One of Snoke’s clawlike hands placed the knife on top of Bane’s tomb. 

“Ben Solo takes up the knife,” he said. 

“Ben Solo takes up the knife,” the knights murmured in unison. It was the fifth time Trudgen had said this incantation. It was the first time for Vicrul. 

Ben Solo took up the knife. 

“Ben Solo bleeds the serpent,” and Snoke waved his hand above the tomb. A snake made of night sky slithered from one end of the tomb. It wavered and undulated slowly before Ben’s hand, glimmering like the beads on his arms.

“Ben Solo bleeds the serpent,” the knights intoned.

With one long deliberate stroke, he slit the snake from just below its jaw, to halfway along its belly, before it moved enough to evade the knife. Blood seeped slowly, then more quickly over the stone, and the snake’s body fell still. 

Snoke put his hand in the pool of blood and pressed his palm to Ben’s face. It burned. 

“Awaken, Kylo Ren,” he hissed. 

“Awaken, Kylo Ren,” The knights repeated. 

Somehow he knew what he was to do. He ran the blade over his palm as if he were entranced by the blooming of his own flesh, and put the cut into the serpent’s blood before him. It burned more sharply than his face, but he did not flinch as he pressed his own hand, where mingled his blood and the snake’s, to his other cheek.

The pain on his skin intensified, and Snoke and the knights were chanting something he could not understand - Sith, maybe? He fell to his knees and all he saw in his mind was a void with stars, but they were not stars, they were a hundred yellow eyes, and they saw everything he was and everything he could be, and there was no deception possible here, only judgment and truth. The eyes pierced his mind so thoroughly that he had to press his forehead to the ground. The chant of Sith was coming from outside him, the knights, and from within, the universe of watchers, and finally they took a collective breath and roared. 

His chest had streaks on it from blood and tears as he slowly came back to his body. His head lifted with effort and he saw the knights around him, watching, waiting. Snoke’s twisted blue eyes were wide. 

“Your offering has been accepted, boy,” his mentor rumbled with pride as he rose from the ground. “The name Ben Solo belongs to oblivion, let it be spoken no more. You leave this place as Kylo Ren.”

As the bindings were unwound and he donned his new clothes, Kylo’s chest blossomed with a relief he’d forgotten could exist in the world. He shredded and threw away the memories of feeling this way in his mother’s arms and the copilot seat of the Falcon. For the first time in many, many years, Kylo Ren felt safe. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for doing this with me, [Nix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nixcomix/), it was fun!


End file.
